After a long lay off following their preseason finale, the Islanders finally returned to the ice on Saturday night and they were able to pull out a gutsy 3-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres in front of the hometown crowd at UBS Arena.
“It’s always nice to start off the on the right foot,” Brock Nelson said postgame. “It’s been a long week for us, I think everyone was excited to get out here and get the opener and get back into real action. The building was full of energy and guys were fired up to play.”
The boys in blue and orange certainly were fired up to play, as they came out flying, and were able to find the back of the net twice on goals from Nelson and Kyle Palmieri in the season-opening period.
“We started the game well,” head coach Lane Lambert said. “We had that layoff and we were ready to go, and the thing is you’re ready to go but there still may be some rust, but I thought we did a good job.”
“We wanted to come out with a good game and I thought we did for the most part,” Casey Cizikas added. “We were excited to get going, I think you can tell that from the get-go, and we applied pressure and just kept going at them.”
New York continued generating chances, but Sabres net-minder Devon Levi was able to hold them off the board over the next two periods, and just two and a half minutes into the final frame they found things evened up at 2-2.
It remained that way until Cizikas broke free of in front of the net and deflected an Adam Pelech shot from the point out of mid-air past Levi, and after a review and Buffalo challenge, it was confirmed that New York had taken the late lead.
“Pelly did a great job of walking the line and getting that puck through, it’s not easy” Cizikas said. “Guys are in front of pucks and are committed to blocking them. To get that puck through the bodies, it was definitely a great play by him.”
Ilya Sorokin made some big saves for the Islanders down the stretch and they were able to hold on for the gutsy 3-2 win to open the season.
“We just kept with it, that was that bottom line,” Lambert said. “There were opportunities in the second and early third. Obviously we didn’t love the fact that they were able to tie things up, but we just kept with it and it was a good job by our guys.”
New York has two more off days before they return to action on Tuesday night against the Arizona Coyotes at UBS Arena.